Why should McDonald’s aggressive marketing policy deter people from going to its restaurants?

Even an aggressive marketing policy does not restrain people from going back to McDonald’s again and again.  

Today McDonald’s is one of the best known fast-food brands in the world. It's present in more than 100 countries worldwide and serves about 68 million customers each day, and of course everyone has at least once eaten at these restaurants. 

McDonald’s main targeted customer segments are families with children, children, teenagers and working people. Each of those groups has different reasons for coming to McDonald’s.

For example, mothers bring their children there to give them a treat because there are usually play areas and free toys in happy meals that children like a lot. Teenagers are generally attracted by affordable prices and free access to the Internet. Working people visit McDonald’s during the lunch break to eat something quickly. Hundreds of thousands of those people eat at McDonald’s almost three or four days a week, even if they know McDonald’s food is not healthy. 

So, why do customers go at McDonald’s so frequently? 

First of all because these restaurants are always situated in busy areas like shopping centers, city centers and stations or near to them. We can observe McDonald’s crowded at any time, thanks to its really successful strategy of affordable prices, attractiveness for children (happy meal and play areas) and teenagers (the Internet), and location.

As those restaurants serve many customers and, in most cases, the space is usually limited to medium sized restaurant rooms, McDonald’s managers have developed a specific strategy to be able to serve more and more customers and to sell as much as possible. To reach the goal McDonald's needs quickly released places in its rooms. So, they have made some steps which are very effective. 

• Orders must be taken as quickly as possible. It should take no more than 1 minute to avoid lines, but also to make customers choose faster, without thinking. In this way people easily accept the staff’s offers and usually forget to specify some details concerning, for example, the drink size (if not pressed the biggest one is sold).

• In the restaurant’s room the furniture arrangement is quite specific. Tables are very close to each other. The first reason for this is, of course, to offer a larger number of indoor places. The second is in fact to disturb clients’ personal space which makes customers uncomfortable. Moreover, the furniture isn't good and provokes back aches after just 30 minutes of sitting. So, they instinctively feel uncomfortable and want to leave the restaurant as soon as possible.

• At McDonald’s people always hear snappy music from everywhere. That is not only to make the eating process fun. Due to the fact that humans have an ability to rapidly adapt to every kind of change, McDonald’s customers eat faster instinctively when they hear snappy music. So, McDonald’s uses this trick to make people eat and leave as soon as possible to free the seats.

• Everyone must have remarked that even if we go to McDonald's quite regularly, in most cases, we don’t remember faces of the employees working there. That is just another trick McDonald’s uses to stop customers spending more time in the restaurant looking at beautiful staff-members. McDonald’s employees are not allowed to wear heavy make up, do manicure and wear skirts. The employees must wear a unisex uniform which masks female employees’ figures.

• The goal of this marketing ploy is not only to minimise customers’ positive emotions, but also to develop the loyalty of mothers. McDonald’s managers noticed that more and more mothers had been returning to the restaurant with their children and husbands just because at McDonald’s men never paid attention to female employees as it was the case in other restaurants.

All these measures are aimed at making consumers feel bad, order and eat as fast as possible, then leave McDonald's by making room for other customers.

In addition, even if we know fast food is neither health nor organic and McDonald’s exercises aggressive marketing policy, we are not able to stop going back to this fast-food restaurant.

McDonald's – We’re lovin’ it no matter what…

Anna AMIRIAN